


Hardly Known

by quigonejinn



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-29
Updated: 2012-07-29
Packaged: 2017-11-10 23:51:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/472101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Would you like a story about werewolves? </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hardly Known

**Author's Note:**

> Consensual Laura Hale/Derek Hale. Graphic references to the Hale house fire. Yes, this is sad.

Would you like a story about werewolves? Try this one. 

A pack that also happens to be an extended family is herded into a basement. They are soaked in gasoline laced with wolfsbane; all the exits are sealed, and more accelerant is poured into the doors, the floors, every surface. The air is saturated, and the family is allowed to burn and burn and burn. Three years later, the only two survivors are a brother and sister who happened to be in school at the time, plus an uncle who hasn't said a word or moved from his wheelchair. In fact, he can just barely manage bowel movements. 

Do you want more? That depends. If you want the sister to be older than the brother, we can arrange that. The sister can torment herself for years with the knowledge that by letting her brother down, she brought about the death of the rest of her family. She can live with the guilt, breathe with the guilt, feel it in her body every time the moon comes up, full or not. She can meet her death in a forest years later. 

Would you like brother to be older than the sister? That is another option, but the story will take a little longer to explain: the brother is older and the sister is two years younger. Their entire family burned to death. There was an infant cousin, three months old, and another young cousin, five years old. Their father used his body to shield them from the wolfsbane-laced gasoline; their mother tried to push them up to the bars on the basement windows. Maybe one of the hunters would take pity. What had a three month old baby ever done to them? How had a five year old ever ever harmed a human? He was attending a half-day kindergarten program; he had just come home from school. 

In this version, after the fire, the sister is the baby of the family. 

...

You asked for a story about werewolves. Here is a part about them as humans: the brother and sister are put in the foster system. After all, their entire extended family is either dead or in non-responsive comas in the hospital, and they're nice kids, good looking kids. Respectable grades at school, no pre-existing behavioral or physical problems. The fire gets a lot of attention; they get sent to a nice family in town who doesn't know they're werewolves, and Derek tries to run away about five months into it. He screws up, though. He still has friends at this point: he has occasional moments of feeling like a normal fifteen year old boy, so he tells a friend, and the friend is worried, so he tells a teacher. The teacher tells the principal. The principal tells the foster parents. They watch Derek like hawks. He would, he realizes, have to physically hurt them in order to slip away. 

He isn't willing to do that, so he ditches the friend, and when his foster parents take their eyes off the ball six months later, he waits two weeks, then tries again. This time, Laura finds him in the woods six hours into it, sleeping in a little hollow of earth half a mile from the old homestead. It's mid-spring, and the ground is wet. The trees just barely have leaves, and the moon is half-full above. 

"Come home," Laura says. 

How old is Derek? All of fifteen. He had sex; he thought he was in love, and as a result, almost two dozen people died screaming. He has been crying, and Laura doesn't quite kneel down, because the ground is wet, but she knows her brother is alive because she can hear him breathing. She had the good sense to wear a raincoat and water proof shoes. He has a windbreaker and a soggy backpack; she can see his breath hanging in the air. Werewolf vision is very good at picking up vision in partial light, and she can see him trembling. She reaches a hand forward and touches him gently on the shoulder. 

"I know about Kate Argent," she says, and she sees him suddenly stop moving, stop breathing, like a deer that knows it's been sighted by the pack. 

...

Laura Hale has dark hair and blue eyes. 

How does she get to be an alpha? 

...

You asked for a story about werewolves. Here is a part about the brother and sister as werewolves: 

A year after that, a total of two years after the fire, Derek comes to Laura: he is seventeen, and she is fifteen. He is planning to run, he says, and she should come with him. Nobody will be able to find them if they don't want to be found. They'll have each other. They can live in the woods; they can go to another city; they can make it work. What will stop them? Derek is in her room, and even with the moon two nights from being full, they can feel the difference between what they are and what they were. 

Their loss hurts like human loss three weeks of the month; it hurts like both human and werewolf the other week. 

But Laura tells him they can go at the end of the year, they'll go when the school year is out, she just needs some time -- she actually has friends and connections in town, and without telling him, she gets herself demoted from varsity girl's soccer due to missing practices, then to JV, then drops out of the girl's soccer team, and starts volunteering as a candy striper. One day, when she's established her bonafides, when she has laid down a track record of not working at the hospital on Wednesday, when she knows where the cameras are and when the security guards take their break in the middle of the afternoon, she slips into the hospital on a Wednesday and smothers her mother, who was the alpha and has been in a coma for two years -- not alive enough to hold the pack together, not dead enough to stop being the alpha. 

Four hours later, Derek comes into bedroom at their foster parents' house -- nice people, beautiful house, the dad thinks they've finally worked through Derek's rough patch, likes to think they've really bonded, and Laura is sitting in the dark. 

As soon as she opens her eyes, Derek knows. He takes a step backwards. 

"Think about it, Derek. You're seventeen. I'm fifteen. We can't go as omegas," she says. "It's too dangerous." 

He walks out of the house and never comes back. He doesn't call. He doesn't write. He gets as far away from her as he can while staying in the continental US, and by the time they track him down in Boston, he is eighteen years old, and they're legally required to give him access to all the insurance money from the fire, the life insurance policies, everything. They ask him if he wants to talk to his sister now that they can't make him come back, and he tells them no, he doesn't want to see her ever aga -- 

...

Laura Hale has dark hair and blue eyes. 

When she is thirteen, she finds her fifteen year old brother, curled up in a makeshift den half a mile from their old home. It's been a year, but she knows he can smell the death and smoke and wolfsbane in the ground, in the air. She can, too, and she bends down and touches him in the shoulder. She says: _I know you were at her apartment, waiting for her when the fire happened. As long as you come home, I don't care._

When she is eighteen, she tracks her brother down and shows up on the third floor of a walk up in Brooklyn. 

...

Here is a story about Derek Hale and Laura Hale: two weeks after Laura turns eighteen, she tracks her brother down on the other side of the country and shows up on his doorstep. She knocks on the door; he happens to answer it, and they look at each other and she looks back at him. Eventually, his roommate calls from the living room. "Who is it?"

Laura's head tilt asks, _really, a human_?

"I'm trying to be," he says, out loud, like a human, and she looks at him for a long, long moment. 

He looks away first, and she says, softly, "Do you want me to come in?" 

Derek can't quite look at her; she interprets this correctly as _yes_ , so she touches him on the shoulder and steps through. She is a head shorter than he is and deeply tan from spending all summer working for surveyors in town: you know, she says, the people who go out with the tripods and measure land for roads and building developments? If she decides to go back, she has a job waiting for her. If she works as an assistant in the office, they'll pay for her to take the examination down the road. 

...

In New York City, who knows that she looks a lot like the older sister they both lost, looks a little like their mother, has their father's eyes when in human form? He introduces her to the human roommate as his ex-girlfriend from back home, come to see the big city. She slips into alpha form a few times to run through the subway system. The first time, he stays at home, eventually goes out to a bar and has a few drinks in the back by himself; he is back at the apartment when Laura comes back, smiling, arching her back. There is a wound that runs the length of her torso from shoulder to hip, but by the time she is back at the apartment, it has stopped bleeding. There are a few spots on her t-shirt; she sits down on the couch next to him, he sees the blood spots. 

"Listen, don't worry about me," she says and pulls off her shirt. "I can take care of myself." He sees it must have been -- deep originally, but as he watches, the edges knit together under her bra strap. What could scratch an a young alpha like that? She smiles, won't tell him, puts the t-shirt back on, and her cheeks are red and her eyes bright. 

The second time, he goes with her, and they run for hours and hours and hours. It's the first time Derek has let himself be a werewolf outside the full moon since -- for a long time, and they pick up two, three omegas who run next to them until Laura sends them whimpering, running off with a snap of her teeth. A third time, they run into an alpha out for a run with a pack of his own. A dozen strong, healthy, tough, with the alpha scarred across the eye and clearly the veteran of territorial battles of his own. The pack circles up around Derek and Laura; Derek shifts his weight and drops into into a crouch. He gets ready to lay down his life for Laura, but it doesn't come to that. 

He didn't even know it was possible for alphas in alpha form to talk to each other politely, but Laura manages it. She explains that she is just in town, visiting. She has no intention of settling. This is only her brother, not even a member of her pack. It hurts to hear that, and by the time Derek realizes that it hurts, that he has missed being a werewolf, that he missed Laura and that he misses being in a pack so, so much, Laura has somehow made the old alpha laugh -- some kind of joke about coming to town to see _words that sounded blurred, that didn't translate clearly_ and needing to just run afterwards because it was such a _cheerful_ experience

"What were you talking about with -- " 

They're sitting in the apartment he shares with his roommate. Laura brought two six packs of beer around that afternoon, by way of apology for being around so much, and she comes back into the living room with a beer in each hand. The roommate is out on a date with a guy who works at a social venture company, whatever that is, and Derek has a suspicion that Laura took the bottle caps off with werewolf nails. 

Derek doesn't know why he introduced her as his girlfriend from back home. The TV is on. It's summer, early enough that they can still open the windows that look onto the fire escape. 

"It's a play," she says and hands him a beer. "Off-Broadway." 

"Did you see it?" 

"No," she says, smiling a little. 

"So how did you -- "

"I asked around before I came into New York, Derek. I found out who the alphas were. One-eye, the one we met tonight, goes to a lot of plays. Artsy, experimental stuff. He might be a professor at one of the colleges, but nobody is entirely sure. Would you believe that?" 

Laura is wearing a I HEART NY tank top and his boxer shorts. She bumps him with her shoulder and asks him to hand her the remote. 

...

Why did Derek introduce her as his ex-girlfriend from back home? Why was that the first thing that came to his mind? 

If Laura decides she wants Derek under her, does he even know how to say no? 

Laura is eighteen; Derek is twenty. Their family burned to death five years before. Laura, Derek realizes, would probably have been the alpha eventually, even without the fire. 

...

Laura finally kisses him one afternoon. The roommate is out at his temp job, and they're sitting on the couch. Laura puts a hand on his shoulder, very lightly, and slides into his lap. They can both hear traffic on the main commercial thoroughfare through this part of Brooklyn even though its five blocks away. They can hear the radio in the next apartment over; they can hear a couple fighting in the apartment across the hall. They can smell every goddamn thing for miles, if they wanted to, just go on total sensory overload, and Derek's breath is fast and quick. He knows his heart is beating loud enough for Laura to hear it down the block if she wanted to. 

He tilts his head back and shows Laura his throat. She kisses it from collarbone to jaw, then tilts his face down to her, so that they're eye to eye, and she says, "Do you want me to kiss you?" she asks. "You can say no. We don't have to do this." 

Laura is wearing an I HEART NY tank top and his boxer shorts. Derek is wearing a white t-shirt and jeans, and very, very carefully, he slides his hands underneath her tank top and undoes the clasp on her bra. Laura kisses her way up the other side of his throat. 

It's been five years since he's had sex with a woman. 

...

Being the younger sister doesn't mean a thing. Laura is smart; Laura has brains, instinct, insight. Even though she is younger, she knows that she let her brother down, that she brought about the death of the rest of her family, and she visits Uncle Peter sometimes at his nursing home. 

...

Laura and Derek fuck in his bed, on the roof, in the night, in the day, in the broad daylight of afternoon. Once in the alley by the bar where he likes to go and drink and sit in a dark booth in the back and read. Her hand is over his mouth, her breath hot against his skin; he can smell the alpha on her through the perfume samples she tried on when he took her to Barneys that afternoon. Another time, they're in a hotel four blocks from the Lincoln Center; she wanted to see a performance there, and the insurance settlement money means they'll never have to work a day in a lives if they don't want to, so they buy tickets, buy nice clothes, slip into a hotel afterwards. Laura pushes him back on the bed, and steps out of her underwear. 

"You sure you want to do this?" she says. Derek is lying on his back; he isn't quite in a tux, but it's a nice suit, brand new. There is a glass of water by the side of the bed, and Laura takes a sip from it, then puts it back down. 

"Yes," he says. 

"This way?" Laura says, taking a step towards the bed. 

"Yes," Derek says, and they can both see how hard he is. All this sex they've been having, all the fucking, he hasn't been able to -- 

Laura pulls up her dress and slides onto the bed, so that she has a knee on either side of his face. 

He keeps his face between her legs on her for a very, very long time.

...

Afterwards, they're lying on the bed. Derek is naked; Laura is still wearing her dress, but black sequins from her dress are scattered across the sheets. Her head lies on his bicep, and his hand is on her hip. 

"How did you know?" he asks. 

"Even before the fire, you talked in your sleep," Laura says, softly. Her cheeks are red, and her eyes are bright. "Little pieces of things. Phrases. I followed you once to make sure." 

"You never told anybody."

"I never told anybody." 

...

Laura killed her mother to become the alpha. Laura let her brother stay in Brooklyn and spend years trying to pretend to be human. When he wasn't ready to come home, she let him be. Laura never made a single beta because she never wanted to put a packmate into the position of having to choose between trying to hold the pack together and keeping her alive. 

Being the younger sister doesn't mean a thing. Laura is smart; Laura has brains, instinct, insight. She goes to the Beacon Hills Nursing Home. The side of Uncle Peter's face is covered in terrible surface burn marks from trying to shield his children from the wolfsbane-impregnated gasoline: his wife had held them up to the bars over the basement doors, hoping that the hunters would take pity. What had a five year old child done to them? What had a three month baby done? 

"I'm sorry, Uncle Peter," she says. 

He doesn't respond; he goes on staring out the window. 

Being the younger sister doesn't mean a thing. Laura is smart; Laura has brains, instinct, insight. Laura knows Uncle Peter is recovering. She knows Uncle Peter is stronger, better, more fit than he lets on. The redheaded nurse who tends him is part of the game. 

Having been younger than Derek doesn't absolve her of anything. 

...

"Come back with me," she says. 

"Are the Argents in town?"

She shakes her head. They're still lying on the bed, holding hands in a hotel room a few blocks from the Lincoln Center. They can hear the elevators moving three rooms over; two floors below, they can hear a family, two adults, at least three children, a teenager and two younger ones. They can smell the room service coming up the freight elevator; Laura's eyes flick to the side, and Derek knows she is listening to a helicopter landing near Columbus Circle. He holds his breath a tenth of a second long, and she figures out that he is smelling two porters who are sneaking cigarettes on the roof of the hotel: it's a game they played with each other and pack members when young. A training exercise, a pack-strengthening exercise. _The pack that listens and catches scent together stays together; the pack that stays together stays alive._

By the time that Laura was five, if Derek said _The pack that --_ in a certain tone of voice, Laura would gleefully complete the rest of the sentence, and everyone would laugh. 

Laura has brains, instinct, insight, the gift for being an alpha easily and well. It wasn't just that Derek talked in his sleep: if Laura had a pack, she knows it wouldn't just be a case of her betas seeing through her eyes, smelling through her nose. She would see and smell and live through theirs, too. Down the hall, someone turns on a television and turns it to CNN. They both listen to it for a moment, and then, Derek looks back at her. 

"Have the Argents been back in town since?" Derek asks.

Again, Laura shakes her head. They're still lying on the bed, still holding hands. 

"Tell me if they come back," Derek says and doesn't let go of her hand. He squeezes it to make sure she knows he means it, but having been younger than Derek doesn't absolve her of a single, single thing, so Laura doesn't: 

She closes her eyes in New York City hotel room and goes back to Beacon Hills two weeks later. She starts a job in the office of a surveyor, starts studying for the examination. 

Laura never intended for her brother to end up as an alpha.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I can't remember if anybody in the present Teen Wolf chronology ever mentions when the fire took place, or whether we've established an explicit chronology for the show/for Kate Argent's creepathon on Derek yet. Apologies if they have. 
> 
> 2\. This came from a request by [marmolita](http://archiveofourown.org/users/marmolita). [Destronomics](http://archiveofourown.org/users/destronomics) and [prosodi](http://archiveofourown.org/users/prosodi) also gave me wholly inappropriate encouragement. 
> 
> 3\. Title from _Green Gloves_ by the National. And yeah, the key line was _Get inside their heads, love their loves._


End file.
